Friday, March 25, 2016

Sunday April 2nd, 1939. In the Concertgebouw hall, just behind the choir sits a 10 year old boy named Bernard Haitink and he looks conductor Willem Mengelberg in the face. The Concertgebouworchestra plays Bach’s St Matthew passion and Philips engineers test out a new sort of taperecorder, called the “Miller recorder”. In the same row as Bernard Haitink sits a lady who bursts in tears during the Erbarme Dich aria and Haitink still recalls how from that moment on he realized what music could evoke in people. Every time I hear this performance, saved on Miller tape, I see the 10 year old Haitink in the the hall, a strange sensation knowing that he witnessed that performance…

For the American people, sorry, your country has strict (ok, idiotic, sometimes) copyright laws and I guess the excellent Naxos Historical transfer by Mark Obert-Thorn will not be available in the USA, but…

The Dutch Mengelberg Society has a marvelous website where virtually all known Mengelberg recordings can be heard and since the server is based in the Netherlands, it should be audible all over the world. Here is not only the complete 1939 St Matthew Passion, but also fragments form the 1936 performance, showing that the 1939 was really a good year…